Mom thinks I live in this dream world where everybody's Ivana Trump.
I started rapping because my mom died when I was about 11 years old, and I was a very rebellious kid. I've been kicked out of every school I've ever been in since 6th grade on, expelled and dropped out in the 11th grade. Music was the only thing that I could really use to express myself, so I started rapping.
I can't help but recall my dad and mom. Depression era kids, 8th and 9th grade educations, clawed and scratched to make a living as dairy farmers their whole life. At least two drought cycles nearly took it all away. They just worked harder, longer... and they made it.
I used to have a blankie, and when my mom had to wash it, I would sit outside the dryer and watch it go round and round, and cry.
My special thing as a kid was to play dead because I thought I was really good at it. When I was 7 or 8, I even did it in the bathroom with a hair dryer in the bathtub. I realized that I was good at it because each time my mom would scream.
My dad used to hunt ducks, and my mom would put them in the pot. We lived really modestly. We had very little money.
Having a mom as a hairdresser was really awesome: I was always her test dummy. I've had every style, every color you could imagine.
Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, I was a college football junkie. My mom attended the University of Iowa and so I can remember I used to run around the backyard in a number 6, Tim Dwight Iowa jersey when I was very little.
My mom wouldn't let me dye my hair for the longest time.
I had been inspired by an organ player named Earl Grant, who played organ and piano together. My mom took me to see him. So I went home, put my piano and organ together, too.
My earliest memories as a kid was I would always try to make my mom and my stepdad laugh at dinner. Or make my friends laugh in class. And, I don't know, it's something I just really enjoy doing.
Since I was very young, probably two or three, I had really good memorization skills. I would memorize stuff from TV and perform it for my family. I was the little performer for most of my early life. So eventually, my mom caught onto that and thought I might want to get into acting.
My mom and I don't have a lot of photos of my early years.
My mom is in charge of my earnings.
I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.
Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.
I'm a human being, I'm a friend, I'm a mom, I'm a writer, and I'm an artist. I do play electric guitar and all of that, but in the end, I'm just a person.
My mom and dad got divorced when I was, like, 8, and when I went to my dad's house on the weekend, he'd play a lot of music: Miles Davis, Radiohead, Thom Yorke, Elton John.
When I was 12, I was living in Iowa, and I emailed so many wrestling schools, and one of them was actually in Boston. I joined it at 18 - the New England Pro Wrestling Academy. They were doing a fantasy camp. I was 17 about to turn 18. I told my mom, 'I'm 18 now. I just signed these papers by myself, and I'm going to do this.'
I became a mom at 37 and having a child has been an emancipation for me.
